cover image The Vines

The Vines

Christopher Rice. Amazon/47North, $14.95 (226p) ISBN 978-1-4778-2663-8

Revisiting the rich, supernaturally mysterious Louisiana of 2013's The Heavens Rise, Rice stumbles with this resoundingly inferior effort. Leadenly steadfast Blake Henderson is still grieving the loss of his lover, John, killed years earlier by gay-bashers. Then Blake's best friend, Caitlin Chaisson%E2%80%94the spoiled, unpardonably dull heir to Spring House, an antebellum mansion with a troubled history%E2%80%94attempts to kill herself when she learns that her husband, Troy, is unfaithful. Awkwardly purple prose dampens the suspense as Caitlin unleashes a supernatural force in the form of bloodsucking vines that consume Troy; soon it's revealed that she has control over carnivorous flowers and organized insects as well as a psychic link to Virginie, an enslaved woman who had attempted to control these forces over 150 years before. Absurd similes and overwrought dialog dissolve the tension as Blake's anger over new revelations about John's death becomes a fresh source of dark power, causing plants to behave homicidally and bugs to form battering rams. A police investigation subplot peters out, and the action clatters clumsily to a bewildering conclusion, with the denouement arriving so lazily as to suggest that even the author ran out of interest. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit. (Oct.)